Tag: Yokuts

By Faith We Are Healed

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

Through nearly every outlet of our socials, we are bombarded by health and wealth influencers, bio and cash hackers promising us sure fire ways to get and stay fit and rich. Whether it’s a food to avoid or consume in high quantities, an elixir or potion to drink no matter how noxious, or a revealed secret that this or that industry doesn’t want you to know, these influencers and hackers will sell you whatever you want to hear except the truth. They will focus on you, making your ill health and unwell-being, your lack of prosperity and thriving your fault, and if you can just do this one thing, consume that one ingredient, you will change your life and, even, refuse the grim reaper his visit. Keeping you consumed with yourself and what you lack while convincing you that success is just one root vegetable away, allows these charlatans to keep you asleep and numb to the real problems of the human condition.

The problem is neither one’s inability to secure health and wealth nor the natural occurrence of death. Our issue, fundamentally, is our obsession with power (domination)[ii] and violence.[iii] We are obsessed with consuming: we consume creation, we consume each other, we even consume ourselves. And by “consume” I do not strictly mean our insatiable hunger for things, but our insatiable hunger for power and domination wherein we use war and violence to “secure” our privilege and greatness. There is nothing that can stand in our way that we can’t and won’t destroy, even ourselves and the very ground under our feet.

In this septic and toxic atmosphere, it’s no wonder that we can barely keep our relations intact. When each person is a consumer, consuming what is necessary to stay on top, no one is safe and everyone is a potential threat. This very mentality and orientation in the world causes fractures in our relationships with ourselves, with one another, with creation, and, most importantly for us, with God. (Yes, even God becomes an ideology to be consumed and, if God gets too big, someone to be dominated and forced to do our will.) It is not so much our bad habits and our good ones that will bring us closer to or farther from death; it’s our relationship with power and violence; it’s our willingness to see everything and everyone else as a means to an end, a crumb for consumption.

Isaiah 25:1-9

O Lord, you are my God;
I will exalt you, I will praise your name;
for you have done wonderful things,
plans formed of old, faithful and sure.
For you have made the city a heap,
the fortified city a ruin;
the palace of aliens is a city no more,
it will never be rebuilt.
Therefore strong peoples will glorify you;
cities of ruthless nations will fear you.

Isaiah’s opening words here are a song of thanksgiving offered from the broader community.[iv] Even though Isaiah speaks in the first-person singular, he speaks for the great Israel and Judah—as the prophet does in their prophetic role as representatives of both God and the people. Isaiah credits God with great and beneficent action, action that is so strong that human made fortifications, palaces, and human manufactured security cannot withstand God’s action, especially God’s action on behalf of the people who need God to act.

For you have been a refuge to the poor,
a refuge to the needy in their distress,
a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat.
When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm,
the noise of aliens like heat in a dry place,
you subdued the heat with the shade of clouds;
the song of the ruthless was stilled.

When the poor and needy cry out, God is there, says Isaiah. Make no mistake, this includes the flora and fauna of creation. Isaiah does not resort to pleas for the rulers of the kingdom of humanity to act right because these very ones are spiritually ill because their politic is driven by consumption and their weapons are violence and war;[v] Isaiah knows there is stronger medicine needed to correct this sickness[vi] plaguing Israel and her people, especially the widow and orphan, the hungry and thirsty, and the ostracized and marginalized.[vii] There is no political alignment with another nation or people that will solve Israel’s problems and such alignment will only prove deadly;[viii] alliances with other nations provoke more consumption and goad those so allied into more violence and war. In other words, alliances are not part of the cure, but the disease.

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,
of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.
And he will destroy on this mountain
the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.

Israel and Judah have (repeatedly) turned to their own devices, wisdom, and strength to try to build a (false) sense of security through deals with other peoples and nations; according to Isaiah, they must only turn to Abba God who is the one who will establish and make for God’s self a people who walk in God’s light. Isaiah makes it clear that these ones—the elect of God—are to live by faith (even if it is difficult); faith is the basis of Israel’s and Judah’s life—life with God, life with themselves, life with creation, life abundant.[ix] It is not by alliances within the kingdom of humanity that will bring the desired security and prosperity; these will only bring war, violence, and death. Faith in God anchors the one who believes in the God who cannot fail to provide comfort and security for God’s people.[x] God is the only one who can inoculate Israel and Judah against the infection of consumption and her children (violence and domination). How? Faith renders the one who has it dependent on God and not on their own strength; once the believer is here in this humble space, the desperate need to be on top, to dominate, to consume, to use violence clears up and out. In this way, faith makes space for something new because it demands the one who has it to release the old, tried, and failing ways of the kingdom of humanity; therein space is made for an interruption by the divine Spirit bringing long awaited redemption from this human sickness.[xi]

Then Abba God will wipe away the tears from all faces,
and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.
It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God;
we have waited for him, so that he might save us.
This is the Lord for whom we have waited;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

God will bring God’s justice; human made alliances and pacts with other human-made kingdoms will not, these will only bring more war and violence, more death of human beings. God heals God’s people, God soothes those who weep in sorrow and sadness, God cloths those disgraced by human violence in divine garments of mercy and righteousness.[xii] God will bring justice where humans within the kingdom of humanity bring only injustice and therein God is exalted and glorified.[xiii] As the irregularity of human injustice is interrupted by God’s justice, human beings are liberated from the captivity to violence and domination, born into love out of consuming indifference, brought into new life out of death.[xiv]

Conclusion

On this day we take a moment to reflect on the way our sickness has ravaged both the land and the people who were cared for and worked this land before us. This is a day that reminds us how much we need and are dependent on Jesus and our faith in him; he is our cure, he is our comfort, he is our way in this world as we work with him to keep human life human (Paul Lehmann). Today, it makes the most sense to give those whom we’ve harmed the final word about the destructive power of consumption, how it plagues humankind, and the divine food that brings life.

Everything was water except a very small piece of ground. On this were the eagle and Coyote. Then the turtle swam to them. They sent it to dive for the earth at the bottom of the water. The turtle barely succeeded in reaching the bottom and touching it with its foot. When it came up again, all the earth seemed washed out.

Coyote looked closely at its nails. At last, he found a grain of earth. Then he and the eagle took this and laid it down. From it they made the earth as large as it is. From the earth, they also made six men and six women. They sent these out in pairs in different directions and the people separated.

After a time the eagle sent the Coyote to see what the people were doing. Coyote came back and said: “They are doing something bad. They are eating the earth. One side is already gone.”

The eagle said: “That is bad. Let us make something for them to eat. Let us send the dove to find something.”

The dove went out. It found a single grain of meal. The eagle and Coyote put this down on the ground. Then the earth became covered with seeds and fruit. Now they told the people to eat these. When the seeds were dry and ripe the people gathered them. Then the people increased and spread all over. But the water is still under the world.[xv]

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] See Carter Heyward, The Seven Deadly Sins of White Christian Nationalism, 49-64.

[iii] See Heyward, The Seven Deadly Sins, 127-139.

[iv] Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Louisville: WJK, 2001), 183. “The opening verses are classified form-critically as a psalm of thanksgiving.”

[v] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets (New York: JPS, 1962), 73. “Politics is based on the power of the sword. But Isaiah as waiting for the day when nations ‘shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.’ Alliances involve preparation for war, but Isaiah was horrified by the brutalities and carnage which war entails. In his boundless yearning he had a vision of the day when ‘nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more’ (2:4).”

[vi] Heschel, Prophets, 172-173. “Dislike for the world or disparagement of civilization is alien to the prophet. His attachment to God calls upon him to be involved with humanity. Yet in the face of idle and false imposition, he announces the contingency and insecurity of civilization, the sickness and liability of man. Israel is under judgment; the covenant with God must not be taken as immunity from judgment.”

[vii] Heschel, Prophets, 73. “Isaiah could not accept politics as a solution, since politics itself, with its arrogance and disregard of justice, was a problem. When mankind is, as we would say, spiritually sick, something more radical than political sagacity is needed to solve the problem of security.”

[viii] Heschel, Prophets, 73. “For the moment a clever alignment of states may be of help. In the long run, it is bound to prove futile.”

[ix] Heschel, Prophets, 73. “Indeed, it is hard to live by faith. But Isaiah insisted that one cannot live without faith…faith is not an easy or convenient path. There are frustrations in store for him who expects God to succeed at every turn in history.”

[x] Heschel, Prophets, 73. “War spawns death. But Isaiah was looking to the time when the Lord ‘will swallow up death for ever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces (25:8…). Israel’s security lies in the covenant with God, not in covenants with Egypt or other nations. The mysterious power of faith maintains: God alone is true protections. Such power will not collapse in the hour of disaster…”

[xi] Heschel, Prophets, 94. “Something new, an outburst of the Spirit, will initiate redemption.”

[xii] Heschel, Prophets, 214. “The grandeur and majesty of God does not come to expression in the display of ultimate sovereignty and power, but rather in rendering righteousness and mercy.”

[xiii] Heschel, Prophets, 214. “Isaiah’s declaration does not speak about values, and its intention is not to assert that holiness and justice are very much alike, or that justice is holy, or that holiness is just. Isaiah speaks about God, and his intention is to say that the Lord of Heaven and earth, of nature and history, finds His true exaltation in justice.”

[xiv] Heschel, Prophets, 215. “If justice is but a category, a conformity, then injustice must be regarded as an irregularity, a deviation from the norm. But justice is like a mighty stream, and to defy it is to block God’s almighty surge. The moralists discuss, suggest, counsel; the prophets proclaim, demand, insist.”

[xv] http://straightarrow.org/stories/indigenous-stories/yokut/the-beginning-of-the-world-wukchamni-yokut/

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From One Grain of Earth

Sermon on John 18:33-37

Psalm 132: 8-10  Arise, O Lord, into your resting-place, you and the ark of your strength. Let your priests be clothed with righteousness; let your faithful people sing with joy. For your servant David’s sake, do not turn away the face of your Anointed.

Introduction

The Christian life can feel hard to live out in moderation. We are told that we are not of this world but merely resident in the world. In the letter to the Romans, Paul exhorts the believers in chapter 12 not to be “conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of [our] minds,” (v.2a-b). In the book of James, we are told that to be friends with the world causes us to be enemies of God (4:4). 1 John 2:15-17 reads:

Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live forever.

With these rather antagonistic words spoken against the world, what is a material girl to do? How do I, a human being—made of very tangible materials of bone and flesh, living in a world that is made up of other various material—navigate this supposed enmity between that which is spiritual and material? That which is of God and that which is of the world? What does it mean to be here but not of here?

Answers tend to range in two binaries: be completely invested in other-worldly, spiritual matters and the non-corporeal or be completely invested in the material and corporeal. The problem with the former is that it makes you too disconnected from the plight of the world and those who are materially sabotaged and held captive by malevolent and prejudicial systems, not to mention the very real tendency to participate in those systems that abuse and consume both the flora and fauna of creation. The latter is problematic because of the tendency to make a religion out of creation, forcing it into a space it’s not supposed to be—forcing the material to be spiritual—thus stealing its mystery and magnificence as it becomes a part of your consumption.

But what if the robustness of our Christian life isn’t in the either/or but in the paradox: in our material existence therein is our spiritual existence, and in our spiritual existence therein is our material existence? What if there is something to the Ruach of God mingling with dirt resulting in human form and existence?[1] In other words, what if the incarnation of Christ our King means something for our life in the present realm and not just the ethereal one? What if the other-cosmicness of Christ’s kingdom is made most manifest in our earthliness when we, filled with the Spirit press into the love of God and find ourselves at the doorstep of our neighbor, in solidarity with them?

John 18:33-37

Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this cosmos; if my kingdom was of this cosmos, my servants would be striving so that I would not be handed over to the Jews. But now my kingdom is not from this place.” Then Pilate said to him, “So then you, you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You, you say that I am. For this I have been brought forth, and for this I have come into the cosmos, so that I may witness to the truth…”[2]

John 18:36-37b

John tells us that Jesus is brought before Pilate, deep within the residence of the governor.[3] In this scene, Pilate seeks to get answers to questions to retrieve information if Jesus is a king or not. In his questions, Pilate reveals his primary concern: Are you a threat to me and my people and land? [4] Are me and mine threatened by your and yours? Jesus’s answer can be boiled down to a not-so-clear: yesno. In other words: Jesus doesn’t deny being a king, but he does deny being that type of king, a king of this world. It’s this ambiguous yesno that causes Pilate to keep along his line of questioning: If a king, what type of kingdom, then? [5] And Jesus’s answer can be boiled down again to another not-so-clear response: therehere and some herethere.

The radical thing about Jesus’s presence before Pilate is that he sees Jesus as merely a man, just a material and corporeal being. Yet Jesus’s replies indicate an otherworldliness to his presence and being.[6] There’s a collision of the divine and the created, of the infinite and the finite, of the immaterial and the material, of the non-corporeal and the corporeal. If there ever was an intersection of the collision of the otherness and the familiar, it’s here in the incarnation of the Christ the king, a divine ruler of the heavens, before a flesh and bone only human ruler of the earth. Here, Pilate is exposed by Jesus—the ruler of land is exposed by the ruler of notland. Here, the Judge is being judged by the judge who is being judged by the Judge; here, life collides with death, and death with life.[7]

Here truth confronts lie. As Jesus tells Pilate that he is here to reveal the truth into this world, Pilate is now in the position to hear it or not. The great Shema, hear!, entered Pilate’s home and spoke to him. If Jesus is the witness to the truth, then Pilate is positioned as the one who witnesses to the lie. He reveals this by his question, “What is truth?” To ask this question exposes Pilate’s not heard Jesus’s voice, the divine call to truth; Pilate remains outside of it.[8]

Conclusion

Of what is Pilate remaining outside? The reign of God entering the kingdom of humanity to overhaul it: by first taking it down to rubble and then resurrecting God’s new kingdom under the reign of Christ and the law of love, mercy and kindness, love and grace, forgiveness and longsuffering, in solidarity and revolution on behalf of the captives. This reign and kingdom does not hover above, to the left, to the right, or just below the earth; it exists in the world and on the earth, forcing everything out of the comfort of neutrality to side with either truth or lie.[9]

And that goes for us, too. We who follow Jesus out of the Jordan and into Jerusalem must see that we are neither solely of this material world nor solely of a spiritual world, for either extreme renders us as neutral to what is going on. Rather we are to hear the truth that is Christ and feel the claim of Christ the king and his reign.[10] We must see our material life made whole by our spiritual life, and our spiritual life made whole by our material life. Through the presence of the Spirit of God, we must see our profound and deep connection to the very soil beneath our feet. As we do, we will see that the breadth of the heavens, the entire cosmos, this world, this creation, this humanity is united in a profound connection of a material-spiritual existence. For from the soil humanity was created by the divine breath of God; in the essence of our existence, we all share in one grain of earth…

The Beginning of the World {Yokuts}

“Everything was water except a small piece of ground. On this were Eagle and Coyote. Then the turtle swam to them. They sent it to dive for the earth at the bottom of the water. The turtle barely succeeded in reaching the bottom and touching it with its foot. When it came up again, all the earth seemed washed out. Coyote looked closely at its nails. At last he found a grain of earth. Then he and the eagle took this and laid it down. From it they made the earth as large as it is. From the earth they also made six men and six women. They sent these out in pairs in different directions and the people separated. After a time the eagle sent Coyote to see what the people were doing. Coyote came back and said: ‘They are doing something bad. They are eating the earth. One side is already gone.’ Then eagle said: ‘That is bad. Let us make something for them to eat. Let us send the dove to find something.’ The dove went out. It found a single grain of meal. The eagle and Coyote put this down on the ground. Then the earth became covered with seeds and fruit. Now they told the people to eat these. When the seeds were dry and ripe the people gathered them. Then the people increased and spread all over. But the water is still under the world.”[11]

[1] Ref. Gen 2

[2] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[3] Part of the definition of τὸ πραιτώριον, the Praetorium.

[4] Rudolf Bultmann The Gospel of John: A Commentary Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1971. 653. “The significance of the question is determined by the fact that Pilate, i.e, the state, understands the concept of king only in the political sense. Pilate therefore proceeds now in an objective manner in so far as he, despite the mistrust of the accuser voiced in v. 31, investigates conscientiously whether there was occasion for proceedings by the state. Does Jesus claim a political status which the representative of the public authority could not recognize?”

[5] Bultmann John 654-655. “Pilate questions further, because Jesus indeed has indirectly affirmed that he is a king; and now Jesus affirms it directly: Yes, he is a king! But of what sort is his kingdom? Some kind of claim to sovereignty must be his, otherwise his statement would have lost all meaning!”

[6] Bultmann John 654. “That this concerns a claim which goes forth to the world from beyond it is signified by γεγέννημαι και… ελήλυθα εἰς τὸν κόσμον, whereby γεγέννημαι to a certain extent is orientated to the viewpoint of Pilate, for whom Jesus is first and foremost a man and nothing more: he, this man, has come for this reason… But because in this man one is confronted with a claim other than human, the mythological ελήλυθα εἰς τὸν κόσμον is paradoxically bound up with γεγ.: the origin—and therefore the being of this man is not from this world, but he has ‘come’ into this world.”

[7] Bultman John 655. “And in truth he has come in order to ‘bear witness’ for the ‘truth,’ i.e. in order to make God’s reality effective over against the world in the great trial between God and the world. He indeed has come into the world for judgment (9.39; 3.19), and his witness is at the same time an accusation against the world (7.7). It is in this ‘witness’ that he lays his claim to sovereignty; he himself is the ἀλήθεια to which he bears testimony (14.6), and he testifies on behalf of himself (8.14, 18). He is the judge, who decides over life and death (5.19ff.). So he stands now also before Pilate, who according to the world’s standard is his judge.”

[8] Bultman John 656. “…‘What is truth?’ i.e. he takes the point of view that the state is not interested in the question about the ἀλήθεια—about the reality of God, or as perhaps it ought to be expressed in Pilate’s way of thinking—about reality in the radical sense. He remains on the outside. For the person who represents this standpoint that means that he shuts the door on the claim of the revelation, and in so doing he shows that he is not of the truth—he is of the lie.”

[9] Bultman John 657. “For the βασιλεία is not an isolated sphere of pure inwardness over against the world, it is not a private area for the cultivation of religious needs, which could not come into conflict with the world. The word of Jesus unmasks the world as a world of sin, and it challenges it. In order to defend itself against the word it flees to the state, and demands that the latter put itself at its disposal. But then the state is torn out of its neutrality precisely in so far as its firm hold on to neutrality signifies a decision against the world.”

[10] Bultmann John 654. “The reader knows that if the βασιλεία of Jesus is not ‘of this world,’ and is not ‘from here,’ as it is ἂνωθεν, and therefore superior to all worldly dominion (cp. 3.31). He knows also the peculiar claim which this βασιλεία makes on man.”

[11] https://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/The-Beginning-Of-The-World-Wukchamni-Yokut.html

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